I was about to let this blog go. Not the name, you understand – just the process of writing a blog every month.
But then…cake.
You should know that cake is the world’s perfect food, or at least in a three-way (tie) with watermelon and pizza.
I love it the best and the most and will eat it every day if I can. I believe in the power of cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this missive, I enjoy baking cakes for people. I like to see their faces when they open the box, and the whites of their eyes when they take their first bite.
That last little bit is creepy, but I mean it in the nicest way possible.
Additionally, if I made all of the cake I want to make/eat, the fit of my clothing would become problematic.
So, hello, you. Let me bake a cake for you.
I have updated my “Let Me Bake For You” page to list the offerings that are available.
Since I want baking to continue to be enjoyable, I won’t accept more orders than I can make with love (seriously. I know that sounds hokey or saccharine or whatever, but I mean it). If you want a cake, stake your claim early in the month and slap your money on the barrelhead (or the Venmo or PayPal – the 21st-century barrelhead).
If you want to give a cake to a person, I suppose I could whip you up a gift certificate for that person. Get in touch.
And if you want something other than a cake, get in touch. I could maybe work something out for you.
Oh, and hey. Share this post with a friend, using the buttons. I am off the Facebook but still use Instagram.
You can also take pix of your cakes and post on Instagram with my inventive hashtag: #charmcityedibles. That would not suck.
In which I skip out on Instagram and Facebook for the month of March but still allow myself the internet.
So it’s Wednesday now, and I have been back in the States since Monday, and I am still exhausted. I have a lingering cough from Canada, and it’s one of those that seems to make getting a full breath hard.
And on the flip side, my entire body seems to be seizing up. I taught small children yoga yesterday and nearly ripped my hamstring in the very simplest of forward folds.
Ah, this mortal coil.
Full disclosure: I spent a fair amount of time (about 15 minutes) on Instagram this morning, lured in by mirror glaze and ultimately repelled by ASMR videos of people eating crunchy things (which makes me want to kill myself).
I don’t miss Facebook at all, but Instagram has been harder. With four days left, I don’t know if I will stay off Instagram after this is done, but I am pretty sure Facebook is dead to me.
Also, side note, since this is, for most intents and purposes actually a food blog, I spent the good part of yesterday making fondant fancies, and, as the Brits would say, I’m fairly chuffed about the taste. I am baking for a teacher friend who is having a writing conference at her school, two kinds of fussy gluten-free treats, and this is one of them.
Still trying to live up to the “fancy” part of the name – right now they look like lumpy green rocks (which is the reason there is not a picture above).
I am feeling low today, for a variety of reasons that don’t need discussing right now. I think if I can feel better and maybe move a little my mood will lift, but right now I just want to lay down for a couple of days. My acupuncturist would remind me that transitions between seasons can be very challenging, especially for us windy vata folk, and I am living into that for real. Travel and crossing back and forth time zones, even just one, compounds the stress.
So I will try to be kind to myself and sit in the sunshine and move slowly like the tiny buds peeking through the warming soil. We will see what happens.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo mentioned above) challenges people with no prior experience and no good sense to crank out 50,000 words of fiction in 30 short days (1,667 words a day for those keeping track). You may not know this about me, but my fiction writing is crap. However, I see this as a writing exercise, a way to stretch my creative writing muscles and perhaps come up with something different from what I have been doing – a new approach, genre, or entree into something expansive and good.
To kick off this process, I am deconstructing my creative practice and the manner in which I express myself through this blog and in other ways (e.g., cooking, photography, the occasional painting). I am intensely curious about why people do what they do, most specifically in this case creative people. In Imagine, there is a lot of research about how one of the mechanisms of our brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPC), is responsible for impulse control (as well as cognitive function and flexibility). These mechanisms are not quite formed in children and teenagers, which is why we want to push their faces in so much of the time.
In adults, impulse control is perhaps too well-established. We have forgotten how to “dance as if no one is watching.” While everyday people have no real issues with this, for creatives types, this is highly problematic. It is impossible to let go and write paint draw dance sing play if you continually run up against the wall of your own self every time you pick up the instrument of your art.
The good news is that when we take ourselves out of everyday life, not only does our impulse control loosen a wee bit (think the excessive amount of drinking and cavorting that occurs on your average vacation versus everyday life), but we also become more innovative and creative. But you don’t need to fly across the globe to responsibly (and affordably) shut off your impulse control. Novel experiences (get it? NOVEL experiences?) can inspire your brain to lighten up a bit. This could be as simple as walking down a different street or looking at a piece of art. Additionally, boring and mundane tasks allow us to relax a bit in the prefrontal cortex. It is true that some of the best ideas occur in the shower – your brain is not so busy monitoring and dissecting every little piece of sensory input and can relax into new thoughts and ideas.
Side note: The majority of this blog was dictated into my phone on the way down to Virginia from Baltimore to take my mom out to lunch for her 75th birthday. Turns out, long road trips are also a good tool to relax the brain’s firm grip on reality. Just ask Jack Kerouac.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is, of course, a novel at the end, but that’s it. Quantity over quality in this case. Imagine also points out that in terms of quality, the most creative people are also the most prolific, producing vast quantities of insufferable crap for each polished gem. So that is encouraging for two reasons:
It does not have to be good, which releases me from any kind of judgment as far as ability goes, which is nice because I have that creativity-stifling characteristic in spades.
Also, Imagine notes that when you think too much about what you are doing the ideas stop flowing and creativity suffers. This is also positive because in addition to the 50,000 words of the crap novel I am about to write, I also have to write my standard 35,000-50,000 words of non-crap that I actually get paid for. So the goal of 1,667 words every day just has to come, loose and easy.
One of the suggestions the NaNoWriMo people make (presumably for people with full-time jobs and multiple young children running around) is to stock up on snacks and treats with which to fortify yourself. This is not, they say, the month to get fancy or complicated with your nourishment. So in honor of the month, and the deconstruction, again, of my creative practice, I present these amazing morsels that just get better as they sit.
It’s fashionable to badmouth Nutella, I think. It reminds me about how people talk shit about Obamacare but when each part of it is broken down they love it. So if I call these toasted hazelnut and chocolate biscotti, I bet haters would convert because they are far more delicious than they perhaps have any right to be. They taste like a big spoonful of Nutella, minus the rainforest-killing palm oil and questionable texture.
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, chopped (get fancier if you like; this is what I had in the house)
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Toast whole hazelnuts in a dry skillet over medium heat until they begin to smell nutty (and maybe brown slightly). Remove from heat and let cool. Rub as much of the papery skin off as you can, then coarsely chop and set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine flours, salt, and baking powder and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine sugars, olive oil, and eggs and mix thoroughly. Use a spatula to add flour, completely incorporating both mixtures.
Add hazelnuts and chopped chocolate and mix completely.
Divide dough into two and place on parchment paper. Shape into six-inch logs that are about three inches wide.
Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes until firm and golden brown.
Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees.
Using a serrated knife, slice each log into one-inch slices. Place sliced side down on the parchment paper and bake again until fully crisped, turning over once, for a total of about 30 minutes – maybe more. Some days I slice the biscotti too thick and it takes longer, or I don’t cook them enough the first time and it takes longer. You are looking for a dry texture. They will continue to dry out as they cool. You can even bake for 30 minutes and then turn the oven off, leaving the biscotti in there to continue to dry out.
Let cool thoroughly. Store in airtight container, or give away. You can’t really go wrong.
This blog is a public service post. I don’t normally do a straight up recipe post because there are way too many of those in the world, but this is different. This recipe for all-purpose, gluten-free flour does not really need gussying up with stories about life or meditations on how things oughta be. This post is brought to you by the utilitarian Getting Things Done Department with some help from Life Hacks University.
It has been two years since I first published my recipe for a cup-for-cup, gluten-free, all-purpose flour mix. This type of mix was a unicorn when I started. The existing gluten-free, all-purpose flour mixes I tried were okay but often used garbanzo bean flour, which imparts a distinct bean-y taste. No thank you.
Other mixes don’t use gums, which is fine for some folks. Some gluten-free people are sensitive to gums, and they cannot use them in any form. But xanthan gum is one of the things that gives gluten-free, all-purpose flour a bit of stretch that gluten would otherwise provide (which is why it works so well for baked goods).
The other issue with gluten-free, all-purpose flour blends in the store is that you must be independently wealthy to buy them. While some brands have come down in price significantly, you are still looking at $3+ a pound for most gluten-free, cup-for-cup, all-purpose flours.
So I solved all of these problems.
This recipe has a good ratio of protein to starch, which lends stability and lift, without using bean flours. The taste is neutral and thus works well for delicate pastry (like pie crust, which does better gluten-free anyway).
Although I can tell the difference when it is missing, the xanthan gum is negligible and can be eliminated from the mix, especially if you are using a recipe that calls for psyllium husk (a non-gum substitute that brings a bit of moisture to baked goods).
And finally, the price. Brown rice flour has been a bit challenging to find decently priced these days, but in general, the amounts below make a five-pound batch of flour for right around $10. I shop at the local Asian and Latino markets for flours (white rice and sweet rice in particular) and utilize the bulk section of my grocery store for the xanthan gum). Granted, that’s not the 50 cents a pound price of regular flour, but $2 a pound is pretty good, especially if you are one of the people who gluten will send to the hospital.
If you don’t feel like making this yourself, get in touch. I can make you a batch or two and send it your way or drop it off if you’re local. Otherwise, hit up Amazon for the ingredients you cannot find in your own town.
Gluten-Free, All-Purpose, Cup-For-Cup Flour
Side note: I have used slightly more or slightly less of each flour (like, 20 ounces of tapioca flour) with only a small noticeable difference, and probably only noticeable to me. Best proportions are below.
Ingredients
24-oz. brown rice flour
24-oz. bag white rice flour
16-oz box of sweet rice flour (sold under the Japanese name “mochiko” but also available as “glutinous rice flour”)
15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)
2 tablespoons xanthan gum
Method
Seriously couldn’t be easier. Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Stir again before using.
Recipe Notes
While this gluten-free, all-purpose flour mix makes amazing cookies, cakes, muffins, and pancakes and also works miracles as a breading substitute for fried things, it is not quite enough to make bread. You need more protein-filled flours. HOWEVER. That should not hold you back. This will carry you through the entire holiday baking season, and I am working on the whole bread issue. #StayTuned
I have used this flour mix in the same amounts called for in every recipe that calls for regular all-purpose flour without any issues. Seriously. This stuff is amazing.
For someone of my age this may seem an overly dramatic statement: I am losing my memory.
For the record, I am 46, born in 1971, so just a shade away from 47 which is officially the late 40s but I don’t really care.
What I care about is that I cannot remember things.
Part of this is a car accident when I was 16. I can remember THAT: staring up through the spiderweb of the windshield, one leg on the driver’s side of my dream car, my 1971 refurbished Volkswagen Bug, the emergency brake raking open a long, bloody seam up the back of my left thigh, and the rest of me in the passenger side. An EMT with a shaky voice, tending to a cut on my head, saying, “It’s fine. You’ll be fine,” and then nothing until the vision of my mother storming through the curtains in the ER, brusque: “You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”
The doc, several weeks later, telling me that my memory would be affected forever by the early trauma to the frontal lobe.
Part of this is other trauma in childhood, some of which I remember and am addressing with My Therapist, some of which I believe is so deeply buried that the excavation itself would cause trauma.
Fast forward decades, when this – this memory loss thing – wasn’t really an issue, to now, when it has suddenly become one.
I can’t remember shit.
Not the funny, old-timer CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) disease.
Whole swathes of my life, gone with no real understanding of what happened or where they went.
Me in a formal dress next to a boy in formal dress: no idea the occasion or the boy.
Yesterday – what I did, where I was.
Some of this can be attributed to the lifestyle of a freelance writer. I have only one real standing appointment every week; otherwise, the days are all meaningless, fabricated markers of time. Other of this can be blamed on my Ayurvedic dosha – vata – which has me consuming large quantities of information and then promptly forgetting it.
But this loss of memory is distressing.
I can’t remember significant events in my life, events that make me the person who I am. Events that have forged relationships with people I love.
The thing that has saved me in many ways is my friends.
In my head, I call them the Keeper of Records.
I have friends who have known me for forty years- they have a grave responsibility to recall the child that they thought I was to the adult I am now.
I have friends who have only known me since this move back to Baltimore in 2014. They have less responsibility, perhaps, but they also have less invested in me. Perhaps they will grow weary of reminding me of their important dates, or nudging me towards our shared memories that are even now, just these few years on, receding.
It’s hard to go on record like this. It feels like failure.
And nothing soothes that feeling better than baking, and eating, cake.
Full disclosure: I have never before eaten Smith Island cake.
#Shocking
As a native Marylander, this is also something of a failure, but I choose to let this one go. I am letting it go because as I type this I am having a big slice for breakfast, which means not only am I not a failure in the long run, but I am also a fucking grownup who can eat cake for breakfast if I feel like it.
Plus, as I was researching this recipe I found out that the one lady on Smith Island who is super famous for her “authentic” Smith Island cake uses BOXED CAKE MIX.
GTFO. That’s just DUMB.
So I looked deeper and found the “original” recipe from Frances Kitching, an innkeeper on Smith Island who is believed to have created this iconic cake. This lady is the real deal; from her linked obituary, she delivers gems like:
“The best thing you can do to a crab is let it be. Clean it, fry it, and watch that it doesn’t pop in the skillet and burn your arm.”
And, when someone asked if they could keep their beer cold in her fridge while they ate:
“You’d be the first. I have simply turned down some people who appeared to have been drinking when they came here to eat. They were in no condition to enjoy and appreciate good cooking.”
The New York Times even stopped by her inn in 1979 to write a story about her. The article is notable in its description of not only the meal the writer enjoyed but also in the beauty of the descriptions of life on Smith Island.
In 2008, Smith Island cake became Maryland’s state dessert. You will note in the description that in order to be a Smith Island cake proper, flavor doesn’t matter, but the number of layers does: between eight and 12 is the standard.
So don’t look too closely at the picture above (hint: mine only has six, but in my defense I was feeling a little woozy when I made this AND it’s my first one AND I am not actually particularly fond of crepe cakes, which is what it begins to be when you have too many layers, so BACK OFF).
Never you mind the layers. I am calling it a Smith Island cake that cannot count. The next one will come correct.
And also, for those of you following along at home, this little thing happened:
I wrote this.
Chad and I have been working on The Food Market {at Home} for nine months (my name is on the inside: “Written with Suzannah Kolbeck”), and it came out on Black Friday. You can order it online, or you can get it at either of his two restaurants, The Food Market in Hampden and La Food Marketa up in the county. I am not shilling this because I make any cash on the deal (I don’t), but it’s a nice big deal, and I am proud of the work.
There is even a recipe for Smith Island cake in here, Chad’s interpretation with a crazy good strawberry-flavored whipped cream cheese filling, microbasil, strawberry dust, and dehydrated strawberries. You, too, can get fancy at home (without too much fuss – seriously).
